Societal suicide

[Manetho]

As my avatar implies, I know a lot of history and try to take a long view of it. But as parochial as it may sound, in the 5,000 years of human history, I can't think of an example of a society committing suicide as spectacularly as ours just did.

Other societies have chosen to support similarly destructive ideologies, but usually in desperate economic straits or after a humiliating military defeat, and never from the position of power that we held. The United States is the most powerful country in the history of the Earth. It has the resources of a small continent, a position in the world's economic order so dominant that it can easily suck up the resources of many other countries without having to invade them, and a massive population of people who produce goods cheaply because they aren't subject to the protections of native-born workers. Its alliances have been the linchpin of the international order for nearly 80 years, keeping the world's democracies together in a loose sense of solidarity against hostile dictatorships, communist or otherwise. Its middle-class people had more material goods than almost any person who ever existed, and its wealthiest had more material goods than even the richest monarchs of the preindustrial age could have imagined.

And its people just voted to take those alliances apart, expel that population of workers, and shut off that global system of trade. And to continue, and accelerate, the most dangerous hidden costs of shoveling all those resources down our insatiable gullets: digging hundreds of billions of tons of carbon out of the ground and setting them on fire creates insulation that gradually heats the planet beyond what our civilization is adapted for, and mass spraying of pesticides to make our industrial agriculture possible causes massive drops in insect populations, the basis of any terrestrial ecosystem. I don't know if we could ever have implemented alternatives to either of these damaging practices, but we — a society that was responsible for for that damage far out of proportion to its population — chose not to even try.

Because white Christians were angry about not being coddled enough. Because young men were angry about not getting laid. Because people of all varieties were angry about the price of groceries and were too obtuse to realize that the government couldn't wave a magic wand to bring them down. And because millions of the people who, last time around, kept this coalition of the stupid and the vicious in check were too lazy or too bigoted against the candidate to bother voting this time around.

The only hope of reversing this disaster is that the imbecilic economic policies that Americans just voted for will be fully implemented and that they triggers a depression and a political backlash. But it will take years, and the damage that can be done in that time is incalculable.

—

On this forum, I raged against this choice, to the point that reasonable members of this forum who disagree with that choice got angry with me, quite understandably so. You're better people than I am, more charitable to the people who made the wrong choice than I can be. I want to apologize to you, but it would probably ring hollow given what I'm about to say. No matter. I'm scrambling my password and leaving.

To the people who made the wrong choice, your only possible excuse is that you live in a self-reinforcing world of lies fed to you by people who profit from making you as bigoted and paranoid as possible. It's not easy to break out of a bubble like that, but at some point, people have to face responsibility for not trying, and my compassion for such people is spent. A lot of people will suffer and die because of you and the people like you. And I hope you suffer, and I hope you die. Your reward will not be in heaven, because heaven is not there. All we have is this life, in this tiny, fragile ecosphere, in a universe that is dark and cold and unrelentingly hostile. You're hell-bent on making this ecosphere hostile to your fellow humans in every way you can manage, so don't be surprised when other humans want to make it hostile to you.

[Some Schmo]

Great post. Fully agree.

I'm honestly not sure how long, if ever, it will take for me to not think of Trump voters as imbeciles. Biden was right: they are garbage.

[canpakes]

Manetho -

I hope you’ll reconsider, and stay. This place has many members - and probably quite a few lurkers - who benefit from your articulate voice.

But, yeah - I get where you’re coming from.

[Some Schmo]

To the people who made the wrong choice, your only possible excuse is that you live in a self-reinforcing world of lies fed to you by people who profit from making you as bigoted and paranoid as possible.

You know, I had almost forgiven Trump voters for their first mistake. This time, however, they pulled the level with full knowledge of what a damn up he is, so it's impossible to forgive.

I am cheering for them to damned suffer. Hard. That kind of stupidity deserves severe punishment.

[ceeboo]

And I hope you suffer, and I hope you die.

I can't even imagine hoping for such a thing (let alone writing such a thing on a discussion board).

[ceeboo]

Great post. Fully agree.

Imagine that.

I'm honestly not sure how long, if ever, it will take for me to not think of Trump voters as imbeciles. Biden was right: they are garbage.

Imagine that.

[Some Schmo]

Go “F” yourself, ceeboo. You're part of the problem.

[Dr. Shades]

No matter. I'm scrambling my password and leaving.

??? Why not just stick to the Terrestrial Forum?

[ceeboo]

Go “F” yourself, ceeboo. You're part of the problem.

You would be wise, instead of melting down and lashing out, if you would pause for a moment and consider why your political party had such an awful day on election day. You need not consider what I say (even though my predictions that I posted on my election prediction thread were extremely accurate) but you should consider allowing somebody to share an alternate perspective with you.

Here: I will help you. It's an 8-minute YouTube video done by Warren Smith (His channel is the Secret Scholar Society) - As it relates to the election results, it is spot on. If you decide to watch it, I hope it helps. If you decide not to watch it, that's fine too.

https://youtu.be/XAm0aLYYKvA?si=kELxeSK58M6gEh2n

[Res Ipsa]

I hear you, Manetho. I spent yesterday reassuring a daughter who can’t understand why half of Americans hate her and more with a trans woman gaming friend who is suicidal. There are only two of the people that the Trump campaign and PACs that support him spent $100 million on advertising demonizing in an attempt to appeal to bigotry among black and Latino Christians. And it worked.

Right now, I feel pretty broken. I see one of our two major political parties hell bent on tearing down the very foundations of our country. A bunch of billionaires have weaponized grievances and incited a mob that will tear down any one of any thing that gets in its way. It’s painful to watch an admitted Leninist like Steve Bannon see his vision of burning it all down come to life.

I get the impulse to withdraw. Yesterday I had half composed my own goodbye message. I think staying off the internet may be a smart thing to do. I do not trust the guy who has described me as vermin and an enemy of the state to honor my freedom of speech.

We’re screwed on climate. That’s the other piece that is utterly incomprehensible to me. Over the years I’ve been following climate science, I’ve seen significant consequences go from “unlikely to happen” or “unlikely this century” either happen or predicted in the next decade or so. Twenty years ago, shutting down the AMOC was seen as a theoretical, but extremely, possibility. Now, the current is slowing down at a rate that could lead to shutdown as soon as the next 3-4 years. That would cause temps in Great Britain to drop 10-15 degrees, devastating all agriculture there. And, other than cooling the atmosphere, we have no idea how to restart the current.

Twenty years ago, climate scientists were not concerned about methane because concentrations of methane had leveled off. Today, they are increasing at an accelerating rate. Some is due to the fracking related boom in US natural gas production. Some is due to permafrost melt, which is also accelerating.

Twenty years ago, Antarctica was expected to gain mass until sometime next century as any melting would be offset by increased snowfall caused by increased water vapor in the atmosphere. Now that we can measure mass more accurately by satellite, we know that mass has been decreasing and will continue to decrease.

The land and ocean sinks that everyone is counting on to help remove carbon from the atmosphere are also breaking down. In 2023, the land sinks took up no net carbon. Countries like Finland, that were relying on land based sinks to meet their Paris Accord goals, are not going to be able to meet them.

Our global temperature indices have been above 1.5 C over pre-industrial for 16 months. 2024 will again be the hottest year. Note, the 1.5 C goal is measured over a 30-year average, so we haven’t failed that goal yet. But that’s not much comfort given the fact that we haven’t bent the curve of atmospheric greenhouse gas production at all.

Even more disturbing, nothing in the models can explain the spike in heating in 2023. That’s caused a split among climate scientists on the issue of whether sensitivity of the climate to increasing amounts of greenhouse gases is higher than previously thought. (My money’s on not, but betting against James Hanson gives me pause.)

Carbon Capture and Storage still hasn’t demonstrated at scale that greenhouse gases can be removed from the atmosphere and sequestered underground safely and dependable. Most of the CSS we have removes carbon from point sources of pollution (like coal plant smokestacks) and uses it for fracking, which increases greenhouse gas production.

When petroleum demand was low during the pandemic, major oil companies made all kinds of promises about getting to “net zero.” With the restart of the world economy and the Biden administration’s pushing of new natural gas export terminals in LA, those promises have been quietly withdrawn.

TL/DR The Paris Accords are based upon a large number of assumptions that are not breaking in our favor. And with the Trump administration set to go full on tragedy of the commons (graze baby, graze), we’re well and truly screwed globally.

Where we are headed is that, in the next decade or so, China will be producing less carbon emissions than the US, even with its much larger population. Europe is making the transition to clean energy much faster than we are. At some point, the world is going to turn on the country that has given the single finger salute to the rest of the planet. We’re stupidly investing in industries to export a product that the rest of the world is moving away from.

China is killing the rest of the world in production of electric cars. They are killing the rest of the world in terms of solar energy technology and batteries. One of the things the Biden administration did right was to keep targeted tariffs on those industries and invest in growing those industries, concentrating on dying areas in red states. Trump will kill that.

There’s a quote from The Sun Also Rises that I think about quite a bit lately.

How did you go bankrupt?

Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

I think we’re in the gradual part of overshoot and collapse, with the sudden part fast approaching.

Still, I won’t — or can’t — wish suffering on my fellow bits of carbon. Our poor brains have not evolved for survival in today’s world. I mourn, but I can’t hate.